By: Nyima Sillah
The Gambia Investment and Export Promotion Agency (GIEPA) has announced plans to boost the country’s export market through more business agreements with the European markets.
Ousainou Senghore, GIEPA’s chief executive officer told The Voice exclusively: “we want to boost the export of this country because the market size is very small that all industries find it difficult to survive on Gambian domestic consumption alone.”
According to him, his agency feels the need to exploit the bilateral trade agreement they had with the EU and other countries so that Gambia as a country can export duty free.
“The Gambia export is about D1.5billion whilst import is D31.8billion. And if you look at the variants between the two, no nation can survive with that because the trade deficiency is so huge and what that tells us is that we are not producing as a nation,
“This is why in collaboration with that Commonwealth and the Ministry of Trade the government through GIEPA developed the National Export Strategy which was launched in August last year by the vice president along with her Ministers,” he disclosed.
He observed that “during the inauguration of the president, we heard the head of the commonwealth that, the baroness was also in town and again with our support letter from the Minister himself address to the commonwealth. So, we have facilitated a scoping mission which is been done by the commonwealth for the implementation of the export strategy because we want at the end of the day that the export strategy be implemented.”
The outcome of the forum will also provide a report that can be submitted to the minister for an onward transmission to Cabinet so that the areas that they are identifying like access to finance, can be resolved by government, he explained. And added that even mechanism can be created particularly with regards to having an export bank or an agricultural or development bank that can help facilitate the production sectors.
The CEO said the two days forum is more or less starting the implementation, noting that a similar document was done in the past but zero implementation took place but believed that with the support of their line Minister and the push that they are getting with the support of the president this one will be implemented.
